Q0075A thief thinks everyone steals.
We suspect in others the faults we carry ourselves; people project their own nature.
Ikigai DailyIdeas for living
Philosophy
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Q0075
Q0087Empty your mind. Become formless and shapeless, like water. When water is poured into a cup, it becomes the cup. When water is poured into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Be water, my friend.
This is the authentic Bruce Lee passage behind many weaker imitations. He first delivered it as dialogue in the TV series Longstreet (1971, episode 'The Way of the Intercepting Fist') and repeated it in his famous December 1971 interview with Pierre Berton — the fullest surviving filmed conversation with Lee. The philosophy comes from his own martial art, Jeet Kune Do: adaptability is not passivity but the ability to flow, fit, strike or yield without becoming rigid.
Q0089Don't fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.
Collected in Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living, a posthumous edition of the aphorisms Lee kept in his notebooks. Lee was a voracious reader who copied and reworked lines he admired — this one echoes the 19th-century American poet James Russell Lowell's 'Not failure, but low aim, is crime.' The point is not to glorify failure but to condemn smallness of aim when the attempt itself can enlarge the person making it.
Q0091The doubters said, 'Man cannot fly.' The doers said, 'Maybe, but we'll try.' And finally, they soared in the morning glow, while non-believers watched from below.
A popular piece of anonymous motivational verse, sometimes wrongly passed around under famous names. Its image is social doubt: disbelief tends to watch from below, long after the people willing to experiment have already left the ground — as the Wright brothers did in 1903.
Q0092An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.
This is best treated as Taoist-flavoured folk wisdom, not a traceable Tao Te Ching line. Its miniature scale is the lesson: small motion has more reality than grand potential asleep on the ground.
Q0093You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.
Widely shared as Carl Jung, but the sentence has never been traced to his writings. It still pairs well with his psychology: Jung held that identity is revealed in enacted patterns — choices, repetitions, avoided duties — far more reliably than in declared intentions.
Q0095Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Famous under Lincoln's name, but it appears in none of his collected writings or documented speeches — the attribution first shows up in the 20th century, long after his death. The proverb needed a woodsman, and history supplied its most famous rail-splitter. The engineering wisdom stands on its own: preparation is not delay; it is the part of the work that makes the rest of the work short.
Q0096I say try. If we never try, we shall never succeed.
From Lincoln's October 13, 1862 letter to General George B. McClellan, written in the pressure of the Civil War. The sentence is practical command language: movement may fail, but refusal to try guarantees failure before battle begins.
Q0097All creation is a mine, and every man is a miner.
From Lincoln's lecture on 'Discoveries and Inventions.' The mine is a metaphor for human discovery: nature, society and the self are full of hidden 'leads,' and invention is the work of digging them out.
Q0098Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.
From Lincoln's notes for a law lecture, where diligence is treated as a professional rule. The advice is not frantic busyness; it is the discipline of not letting unfinished duties quietly become tomorrow's burden.
Q0099Imagination means nothing without doing.
Chaplin wrote this in 'Mr. Chaplin Answers His Critics', an article he published in The New York Times on 27 October 1940 defending the impassioned final speech of The Great Dictator. Critics had called the ending preachy; Chaplin answered that ideas mean little until they are acted on — a fitting creed for a filmmaker who wrote, directed, scored, produced and starred in his own films.
Q0100Let us strive for the impossible. The great achievements throughout history have been the conquest of what seemed impossible.
From a speech Chaplin gave on 22 July 1942 at a New York rally urging the Allies to open a second front against Nazi Germany. The wartime setting gives the line its scale: 'the impossible' here was not private ambition but a collective effort millions doubted could succeed. Chaplin's political speeches of this period later contributed to his exile from the United States in 1952.
Q0101Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.
One of the most quoted lines under Chaplin's name, though it is not tied to a specific film script or text of his. Its consolation is double-edged and very Chaplinesque: impermanence takes the good things, but it takes our troubles too. The Tramp — evicted, jilted, jailed and always walking on — is practically this sentence in motion.
Q0102It is always brave to say what everyone thinks.
Widely linked to Georges Duhamel (1884–1966), the French physician-novelist who served as an army surgeon through the First World War, though a first printed source has not been pinned down. The courage it names is specific and rare: not noise for its own sake, but the nerve to say plainly what a room already knows and is carefully avoiding.
Q0103Look at your habits. Are they the product of innumerable little cowardices and laziness, or of your courage and inventive reason?
From The Gay Science, aphorism 308, 'The history of each day.' Nietzsche asks whether daily habits are made from cowardice and laziness or from courage and inventive reason; character is not declared, it is accumulated.
Q0104Nothing helps. I must help myself, or I am finished.
From Nietzsche's March 6, 1883 letter to Franz Overbeck, written during a period of strain and illness. It is not a cheerful self-help slogan; it is the hard edge of self-rescue when no outside remedy is arriving.
Q0105The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Often linked to the Tao Te Ching, the line turns a vast goal into a bodily fact: no journey is entered all at once. It begins underfoot, with the first real step rather than the perfect plan.
Q0106The wound is where the light enters you.
Our wounds and broken-open places can become the very openings through which insight and growth arrive. Associated with Rumi.
Q0107The tongue has no bones, but it can break hearts.
The proverb gives language a physical consequence. Words have no bones, but they can change trust, shame, courage, and memory; this is why careful speech is a moral practice, not just politeness.
Q0108The rose's lover must endure the thorn.
A rose is beautiful because it is alive, and living things come with difficulty. The Turkish proverb is not a call to suffer pointlessly; it says mature love sees the whole reality, not only the pleasing part.
Q0109He who has health has hope.
The proverb links health with possibility. Health does not guarantee happiness, but it gives the body and mind enough ground to imagine tomorrow, make plans, and recover from setbacks.
Q0110Fear less, hope more.
This Swedish saying is short enough to sound like a daily rule. It does not pretend fear will vanish; it asks that fear should not be allowed to make the whole climate of the mind.
Q0111A single bracelet does not jingle.
A Congolese proverb, close kin to 'it takes a village'. One bracelet makes no sound; it is together that people, and things, create music.
Q0112Vision without action is a daydream.
Vision gives direction, but action gives it a body. The proverb is useful because it refuses both extremes: activity without aim scatters energy, while vision without action stays safely imaginary.